Doubles pair stage protest after toilet break denied

|Reuters

(Reuters) - Pablo Cuevas and playing partner Marcel Granollers held a sit-down protest at Wimbledon after they received warnings for threatening to urinate in a can and blasting a ball out of the court when the Uruguayan was refused a toilet break.

The 15th-seeded pair were knocked out of the men's doubles tournament on Monday when they lost a controversial third round clash 6-3 4-6 6-4 3-6 14-12 to Jonny Marray and Adil Shamasdin.

Britain's Marray sympathized with his opponents, feeling the situation could have been handled better by umpire Aurelie Tourte, while calling for toilet breaks to be added if matches went into a fifth set.

"You have to take bad calls on the chin at some point. I went to the bathroom twice during the match and obviously the fifth set was a long one," Marray told British media.

"I think you should be allowed an extra toilet break if it's five sets. You have to respect the officials regardless of whatever happened in the match. You can have a word or two but they're trying to do a job and you have to respect that."

Shamasdin believed that Tourte had crumbled under pressure after making several early errors in the match.

"I don't think the chair umpire really had the match controlled. She made a few mistakes early on at both ends. We were all on her and she was definitely flustered," the 34-year-old Canadian said.

"I don't think she handled it correctly."

(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by John O'Brien)